Five Reasons Why Digital Marketing Is Great for Small Businesses

I hate betting. However, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to place a bet on something or you pull the trigger, I would place a bet on digital marketing. This is because, in the marketing arena, I have observed digital marketing delivering outstanding results that are unthinkable in traditional marketing. 

Nevertheless, lots of small business owners still prefer traditional marketing because it is what they are used to – or because they haven’t heard of digital marketing. My aim for writing this post is to share some of the good news of digital marketing and to prove why I believe it is the best bet. 

Marketing budget

For many medium- and large-size companies, the marketing budget is fat. They don’t mind paying one million Naira for a full-page newspaper ad. Small businesses, however, don’t have that luxury – and this is one of the vital reasons to go digital. 

On social media, most especially on Facebook and Instagram, you can run an ad for as low as ?1000. Digital platforms such as Google My Business and local business directories are free to use and can get you lots of customers. 

Audience targeting 

In traditional marketing and advertising, marketing messages are delivered to everybody, whether the person is interested or not interested in the product and service. Advertisers are helpless and can only pray the target audience comes across the advertisement. 

But in the case of digital marketing, as an advertiser, you can target the people that are likely to buy from you. Google and social media ads are delivered by algorithms that allow advertisers to target people based on their demographics, interests, and behaviours on the internet. 

No wasting of money on marketing to people not interested in your offers. 

Return on investment

If a small business is to survive, every kobo spent on marketing must deliver at least double the money spent. By going digital, the chance of getting a return on investment (ROI) is high, as campaigns are cheaper and the conversion rate is higher. 

Campaigns are measurable

How possible is it to know the number of people that read your fliers? What about the number of people that listen to your ad broadcast on radio? It’s impossible.

However, in the case of digital marketing, it is possible for you to know the number of people that come across your marketing messages. In fact, it is possible to know the number of people that consume your marketing messages to the end and those that stop along the way. 

There are lots of digital marketing tools that give insights into your audience. To mention a few, Google Analytics shows you how people interact with your website; social media management software shows you how people interact with your posts; and email marketing platform lets you know if recipients open your email. 

I doubt if you can know if a recipient reads your letter of introduction delivered by NIPOST, Nigeria’s postal service.

Campaigns are adjustable

This point is related to the last. Through digital marketing, you can measure the results of your marketing campaign on-the-go – and make an adjustment or stop the campaign it isn’t working. In the same vein, If a campaign is succeeding, you can double down on it. 

This is possible because almost all digital marketing platforms allow you to edit and adjusting on-going campaigns. 

As for traditional marketing, on the other hand, campaigns are almost cast in stone. You can do little or nothing to adjust an ongoing campaign. Even a small typographic error in a print publication can’t be corrected: the publication has to be reprinted. 

With the points above, you would agree with me that digital marketing is indeed the best bet if you own small business. Note that the above points don’t mean that you should totally ignore traditional marketing. Your overall marketing strategies should be a mix of both digital and traditional. But digital marketing should be at the centre of your marketing strategies, because of its effectiveness.